Summer on Kendall Farm(48)
He set his fork down and folded his arms in front of him. Kelly hated this gesture. He was either gathering courage to dictate something or buying time. To her it seemed cowardly.
“I want you to give up this farm business and come back to work.”
“I already have a job,” she told him.
“You can’t want to continue here. You’re too good. And what happens when you finish the place? There’ll be no job waiting for you. You’ll fail.”
“Fail,” she said. “You think I’m going to fail?”
“Of course not. I think you’d be so much better at what you do best.”
“Perry, you have no comparison for what I do best. How do you know my work at the Kendall isn’t better than me selling toothpaste or cupcakes or the newest shade of lipstick?”
“Because I know you.”
“Even if that’s true, I get more satisfaction from working at the Kendall than I ever got working on the Crawford or Grissom accounts.” The Crawford account brought in ten million dollars. It was her job to get consumers to buy their food products, specifically peanut butter and a variety of canned goods.
“What about us?” he asked.
Kelly nearly dropped her cheeseburger. “What us?”
“You know we were the best team at the agency.”
Kelly understood what was happening. They weren’t a team. Perry was a user. He’d used her, but she had been too blind to see what he was doing until he’d dumped her. He’d thought he could do it on his own, and when the time came for him to produce something new that the client would like, he couldn’t do it. And that’s why he was trying to get Kelly to change her mind.
“I have my own team here,” she said. “We work well together and we get the job done.”
“But think about it, Kelly. We were phenomenal. Between the two of us together, we could open our own agency.”
“Perry, you don’t seem to understand that I’m happy here.”
He looked out the window. Kelly glanced out, too. Jace drove into the lot and parked next to the red sports car. She watched as he slid out of the cab and headed for the front door. What now? She couldn’t see Jace and Perry becoming fast friends.
“If you come back, you can have your own team. It would be so much easier for you and you wouldn’t have to handle every detail yourself,” Perry said.
“I don’t handle every detail here,” she said. “All changes require my approval, but I don’t have do them myself. I like doing them. If I don’t do it or can’t, I hire someone.”
“What about that guy?”
“What guy?”
“The one who’s shown up out of the blue.”
The door opened and Jace walked in. “You mean that guy?” She indicated Jace. “He’s helped me out a lot and he’s a friend. Now you can return to New York and put your own team together. Thanks for lunch, but I see I have a ride back to the farm.” She intentionally used the word farm.
“I’ll give you a call in a few days. Think it over. It’s a good offer.”
Kelly didn’t need to think about his offer. “Is everything all right here,” Jace asked as he came to the table where the two of them sat.
“Yes,” Kelly said. “Everything is fine.” She got up and looked at Perry. “Thank you for lunch. Have a good trip back to the city.” Then she looked at Jace. “Do you think I can hitch a ride back to the Kendall?”
* * *
JACE OPENED THE cab door and helped her inside. Fastening her seat belt she wondered why he’d come to find her.
“What was that all about?” Jace asked. They were on the highway, heading to the house when he spoke.
“He asked me to return to New York.”
“Why?”
“I’m not really sure. I have the impression they got some new accounts and need people who can step in and work immediately.”
“I get the impression that work had nothing to do with what he wants,” Jace said.
Kelly winced. She had gotten the same impression.
“You two were more than colleagues, right?”
She waited a long moment before answering. “Yes. We worked together and we were a couple. I thought we believed in the same things, wanted the same things.”
“But...” he prompted.
“But he apparently he had other ideas,” she said.
Jace reached the Kendall’s circular drive and stopped the truck. Neither of them got out.
“What happened?” he asked.
Kelly released her seat belt and shifted in the spot to look at him. He leaned over the steering wheel, giving her his full attention.
“Working in the kind of New York agency that I did is a twenty-four hour a day job. In advertising the client always wants something new, something that will skyrocket their product to the top of the market share pyramid. And they wanted it a week ago. If that doesn’t happen and the client jumps ship, the project executive and staff are usually fired.”